


Working Title

by page1229



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:27:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23484565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/page1229/pseuds/page1229
Summary: A year after the Night Howler case, Judy and Nick are faced with an interesting case. Young mammals are going missing with no witnesses or signs of struggle. Can these two find the missing kids before it's too late?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Working Title

**Author's Note:**

> I found myself with suddenly a lot of free time because of the COVID-19 outbreak. The other night, I decided to watch Zootopia again after a few years and became really engrossed in the story and characters. I'm not sure where this story will lead (I don't even have a title for it yet) but as I'm able to progress it, I'll add tags and characters as they come up. I want this to follow an action/mystery as much as possible and as much of a furry as I am, I don't know yet if there will be any romance. It all follows how the story and characters flow so I don't plan on shoe-horning in any forced relationships for the sake of fanservice.  
> If anyone has any suggestions for a title, please leave a comment and I'll be sure to give credit.  
> As usual, copyrights belong to Disney for the franchise and characters involved. There will be OCs but only for the sake of fleshing out the cast and driving the story forward. Judy and Nick will remain the protagonists of this story.

Chapter One

  
Judy's nose twitched at the bitter scent of coffee in the police station break room. It was 6 am on her scheduled off day but Chief Bogo called her in for an important meeting. Her grey ears hung low as she yawned and rubbed the sleepiness from her eyes. She had just changed out of her street clothes in the locker room and needed coffee to start what was surely to be a long day for her.   


"Morning, Jude," her partner, Nick, yawned out when he saw her. He had just walked in, still in his green button down shirt and slacks. His eyelids still drooped like he was sleep walking.  


"You too, Nick?" she yawned in reply. Definitely a long day.

"Yup." The red fox poured two cups at the coffee maker and handed a mug to Judy.

"What time did you get to sleep?"

"Four thirty."

"Cheese and crackers, why?" The bitter drink did its job almost instantly. Judy's violet eyes widened and life was slowly coming back to them.

"I had an old friend who needed help."

"I didn't know you had friends," the rabbit mocked.

"Haha." Nick slumped in his chair, resting his chin on the break room table. Judy hopped into the chair next to him, her feet dangling in the air. "He promised never to call me again if I helped him move some stuff last night. Turns out, it was more than just 'some stuff.'"

"Is he moving?"

"He wants to move back to his parents's place. They live outside of the city. We packed up his entire storage unit and his house furniture. It took us six hours."

"Wow. And here I thought you were out with Finnick all night."

"Nah. His niece had her bat mitzvah so he couldn't come."

"Oh darn, I wish I had known. I would have sent her something."

"Eh, she only turns thirteen once. You're good." Nick snickered into his drink, almost inhaling it through his nose and causing him to cough.

"Wilde! Uniform! Now!" a bellow came from the doorway behind them. The ox filled the frame almost completely, having to stand sideways in order to fit. "We meet in fifteen minutes. Everyone not scheduled to work can go home after but I expect you to report first thing tomorrow." He ducked his head back to the other side of the doorway, careful not to catch his horns.

"Want me to wait for you?" Judy asked, still holding her half full mug.

"Nah, just save a seat for me." Nick slid off the chair and walked towards the locker rooms. 

Judy watched as Nick walked away, a feeling in her stomach telling her that whatever Bogo needed to tell them was not going to let them enjoy their day off.

* * *

"You're late, Wilde," the chief grunted, staring down his reading glasses as the fox took his seat next to Judy.

"I got lost."

"If this wasn't so important, I would put you on ticket duty for the next two weeks. But we need officers for this case, so zip it."

Nick mimed a zipper pulled across his lips which were in their usual grin. Judy rolled her eyes. Bogo scowled but brought up his clip board. One of the officers in the back hit the lights to make the projected screen on the board more visible. The first image was a family photo for a pack of snow leopards: a husband and wife standing side by side, the husband's hand on his wife's waist; the wife held a young cub in her arms, wrapped in a pink blanket with their eyes closed; two older cubs stood in front of their parents, the boy was as tall as his dad's hip, the girl only reaching the dad's knee.

"We got a report this morning," Bogo started, reading off his clipboard. "Mr. and Mrs. Peterson reported their children, Robert and Mona, missing. They were last seen at 8 PM last night when Mrs. Peterson tucked them into bed in their own rooms. There was no sign of a break in."

The image changed to a floor plan of a house. The blue prints suggeested a single story home with a master bedroom on one end of the house and two smaller bedroom on the opposite end. In between were hallways that led into a kitchen/dining area and the front lobby that doubled as a living room.

"Mrs. Peterson said she got up this morning, woke her husband and went to wake the two children to get them ready for school. When she entered their rooms, their beds were completely empty, the blankets throw as if the children got up themselves. No windows were open. Then doors had not been forced open. No signs of a struggle."

The next image was of two armadillos: An older male with thick framed glasses and a younger female wearing colorful makeup.

"Two nights ago, Mr. Jack Fergusson reported his fourteen year old daughter, Lily, missing. He reported that she had gone to school that morning and he was to pick her up in the afternoon. When he arrived at the school, Lily did not come out of the building. School faculty informed him his daughter had not been in class that day. Her friend and classmate, Sara Jackson, told Mr. Fergusson she had not heard from Lily that morning."

The projection went off and the lights came back on. Bogo removed his reading glasses, staring at the officers with a grim expression.

"As you all know, three weeks ago, Xavier Cummings, an eight year old bear cub, also went missing without any witnesses or signs of struggle. We are not ruling out that his disappearance may be related to this case but we are not to confirm with any press that he is connected to these other missing persons. The only thing connecting these disappearances is they are children and they seem to disappear in the early morning hours. Mr. Fergusson had confirmed he last saw Lily when she went to bed the night before at 10 PM. We did question why he had not seen her that morning, he explained because he works night shifts he normally does not see Lily until he picks her up from school."

The room was quiet. Judy's stomach was turning. She remembered back in Bunnyborough a series of disappearances before she was born; she had learned about it during her studies to become a cop and her parents confirmed the stories. Children in their town seemed to randomly disappear during a year long search.

She shook her head. She remembered the case images she had found. The bodies that were recovered. Judy knew things like this would come up with being a cop but it still made her stomach do backflips.

Bogo cleared his throat. He picked up three files from his podium, all of them red manilla folders. "Dominguez, McCoy, Pennington: you three will check the Peterson household in Tundratown. Prater, Sanders, Vasquez: check Lily Fergusson's school and the neighborhood in Sahara Square. Jones, Matthews and Thompson will continue looking into the Cummings case. You have one new lead by an anonymous tip that came in this morning, check the file."

As the officers emptied out, Nick could feel how tense Judy was becoming. When he looked from the corner of his eye, he could see her ears were alert, her body shaking slightly. He could not see her face, her back was rigid, her elbows on the desk in front of her with her paws clasped tightly together.

"Everyone who was scheduled off today can resume their day off," Bogo announced. "Be ready to be on call, however. We have new recruits running the usual patrols but be prepared anyway."

Judy's paw shot up into the air. "Sir, do you expect more children to go missing?"

Bogo sighed, "Anything is possible, Hopps. Just keep your ringer on."

* * *

The grey rabbit remained silent all the way back to her apartment. Nick had gone home to get some much needed sleep, but not before making a point to turn his phone on silent.

"No one wants to see a sleep deprived fox," he explained as he casually stuck his hands in his pockets.

Judy was a little hurt he had not seemed to notice how tense she was but she quickly reasoned that his lack of rest was to blame.

"I would be grumpy too if I had only an hour of sleep," she thought to herself. Still, she would have appreciated some gesture or acknowledgement.

When she got to her apartment, she collapsed face down onto her bed. But try as she might, her mind would not stop spinning with what was going on. The images from the projection board were still flashing behind her eyelids, along with the pictures she had found from the Bunnyborough disappearances. She did not want to think the worst case scenario but Xavier Cummings had been missing for three weeks.

Originally, they thought maybe the boy had run away to live with his mom since his parents were divorced. But when the mother was questioned, she had not seen her son since she had dropped him off at his father's at the end of their weekend together. The mom was a former drug addict trying to get her act together but the court had still thought it best the dad had primary custody. The mother's boyfriend was even questioned but he had not seen Xavier either. The only other lead they had was a homeless coyote was seen wandering around the school he attended but no one was able to pinpoint where he was. He had disappeared the same time as Xavier but as he was a vagrant, no one reported him missing since he was just as likely to have hopped on a train out of Zootopia.

"Three disappearances, four kids," Judy muttered to herself. She flipped over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. One bear, two snow leopards, and an armadillo. The armadillo was an omnivore so that threw only predators being targetted out the window. And their ages were all different along with their genders. The only common thread was they were kids and no one saw them the morning they went missing. They had not even made it to school.

"Why so early?" The Peterson children had not even left for school yet when they went missing."No struggle or break in, so how?" Judy chewed on her bottom lip. She was told to take the rest of her day off but her head was still rolling everything over, turning over stones to see something that might have been missed. Which was hard to do without the case files. She would have to wait for tomorrow before getting her paws on the folders and even then, it was not guaranteed she would get to see all of it. In the meantime, more kids could possibly disappear.

"What do I do?" she sighed. It had been a year since the Night Howler case was closed. For more disappearances to come up so soon after seemed too coincidental but there was not a connection. All of the missing animals then were adults and they were all predators. And solving that case did not grant Judy and Nick any special privelges. It only put them in Bogo's good graces for a short period before Nick, fresh out of the academy, was caught fooling around with equipment and almost tased Clawhauser. The pair was then put on ticket duty for almost a month.

When Judy closed her eyes before finally falling asleep, the last thing she heard was her two neighbors yelling through her wall.

**Author's Note:**

> If you read the notes in the beginning, I am looking for help with a good title for this story. If you have any suggestions, leave a comment and I will give credit once I've updated.


End file.
